Chime in...what is the role and responsibility of schools to use or limit screen time?

Wow! When we came back from a vacation I asked students what they did over break and this was the first time in 20 plus years of teaching that most students said "nothing." The majority, when prodded, 90% or more, reported they played video games for most of their break. It was a huge surprise. Most didn't travel, didn't surf, didn't play football, didn't skate, didn't go to the beach or movies with friends. Instead they stayed inside, on the screen.

I also thought about a billboard I saw driving home from holiday vacation that was for a rehab facility. It had listed programs for alcoholism, drug-addiction, gambling, and gaming. I remember it surprised me. After hearing the students report their screen-focused vacation time, it really hit me hard and it suddenly reminded me of a family I knew years ago where two brothers both ended up logging over 50 hours a week on video games. They were known in my husband's circle as amazing gamers on the game "Ever Quest" but after a year of this "accomplishment" both were divorced; wives reported it was due to the video game addiction. My husband swore off the game.

I hadn't thought about it for years, until now. Am I on to something here as I lay on my screen, typing away after a day of "working" online? What is our responsibility as educators? How many of us are still on our screens, after we've asked our own children to go to log-off and go to bed?

Many of us have been dedicated to closing the access gap and getting technology into the hands of our students, but now are we contributing to this screen overload? I have friends who attend Waldorf and commit to no or little screen and I respect that, but in my own family, we really like to hang and watch TV together and find it really relaxing. But instead, is it just numbing out our brain and keeping us from being able to wind-down naturally?

Now it's really making me think as a parent and an educator about my habits and curriculum and how screen is part of everything I do. What do you think? I am urging students to investigate this problem at our school, to get a baseline of screen time. We are also getting more calls this year from parents concerned with their students performance and noticing that they can't get them off of video games and asking for our help.

What do you think? sleep, screen time, and video-gaming

Post your comments, research and/or experiences with screen time in your school, home, and community. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/04/18/school-principals-overwhelmingly-concerned-about-childrens-scree.html https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/16/is-internet-addiction-a-health-threat-for-teenagers/dont-limit-your-teens-screen-time https://www.screenagersmovie.com/sleep-screens/ https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/05/579554273/screen-addiction-among-teens-is-there-such-a-thing https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/video-game-addiction-no-fun#1 https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/stevens/ct-life-stevens-wednesday-screen-time-doesnt-harm-kids-0109-story.html

A "Day On" or a "Day off"

A new year...a new commitment to service In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. January is a month of service... Get started with these links to help you serve on January 21st: https://ysa.org/act/mlkday/ Check-out the Kindness Rising Campaign. https://leadasap.ysa.org/kindnessrising/ A day "off" or a day "on"? What will you do for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service? https://www.nationalservice.gov/serve-your-community/mlk-day-service

Library - Serving Up Creativity in the Maker-Space

Don't rename it..ReDESIGN IT. Tinker Lab Design Maker Space...better yet, call it a Library and help expand others' point of view of what a library is and can be.

We know it's the most democratic and accessible space in the building so call it a LIBRARY so everyone can CHECK IT OUT!

Art, design, tech and engineering companies have extra materials on hand. Have students design and send video requests for materials.

Students can ask for robots that have a glitch and put them in a bin and check them out to see if students can fix the glitch. Too often, we are buying kits that have a final product. NOOOO! Get a variety of materials in the hands of kids and let them go. Let's get out of their way and get them creating.

Ask your local companies to challenge your students with problems they can't seem to solve. Our students have not learned "no" in their design thinking. We can't wait for us to design curriculum that leads them to solutions, they need to find the problem and the solution.

Your library is the most democratic space in the building. Everyone has access and it's FREE. No signing up for a class and hoping you get in. Everyone is allowed in.

Have students help to design the space with art, design, tech, engineering materials, machines, and inspiration, put a barcode on bins and the tools, and let them check out as many consumable materials and the tools they think they'll need, or as many as they can carry and send them home to tinker. Set-up a spreadsheet where local businesses log problems and students can try to solve them.

Set-up a room with discarded electronics, goggles, tools, and train a monitor to oversee the space at lunch and let them go for it! CA Library Standards https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/librarystandards.pdf School Learning Commons (Dr. David Loertscher - my guru) http://www.schoollearningcommons.info/ Rethinking Our Library Space http://renovatedlearning.com/2015/01/28/rethinking-our-library-space/ Looking to Create a MakerSpace In Your Library http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2015/10/14/looking-to-create-a-makerspace-in-your-library-here-are-some-ideas/ Make it At Your Library http://makeitatyourlibrary.org/ Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces https://www.webjunction.org/explore-topics/smart-spaces.html

Feedback - Ongoing, Where to go next, Just in time

Preparing for the year?

How will your students receive feedback? How will they know how to improve?

Learn more in this interview with John Hattie

How can teachers learn to give (and receive) feedback in an appropriate and timely manner?

There are two things I have learnt about feedback that are important – first think of feedback that is received not given. And while teachers see feedback as corrections, criticism, comments, and clarifications, for students unless it includes “where to next” information they tend to not use it.

Students want feedback just for them, just in time, and just helping nudge them forward. So worry more about how students are receiving your feedback much more than increasing how much you give.

Also, a third major finding is when teachers receive feedback about their impact then the students are the biggest beneficiaries.

Seniors Are Smart: a service learning idea

Feeling patriotic? Take a minute to recognize those who've come before us...

Seniors Are Smart: a service-learning activity for the first semester focusing on local seniors

Overview: Publish an anthology of stories from local seniors. Students interview local seniors at a senior center/home or host a day at a local library and invite seniors to come in and share their stories.
1) collaboration is key: ask your Librarian how to best set this up for a group of students to interview a group of seniors; pay attention to permission from facility and/or family of the seniors as well as safety, limitations, and logistics for all involved
2) investigate how to do a power-interview: questions, transcription, etiquette/manners
3) interview seniors
4) in class - students transcribe and read stories out-loud to the class
5) together, determine criteria for evaluating stories to include in an anthology
6) create a publishing house/company in the classroom (editor, copywriters, proofreaders, designers, illustrators, photographers, promotion)
7) compile and publish anthology of interesting stories
8) get photos of the publishing company and each of the seniors that made it into the anthology
9) publish and promote the book at the library or center/senior home if the seniors cannot leave their facility

If you have permissions from the seniors and/or their families/facilities please link your books to my Community Narratives blog at http://communitynarratives.blogspot.com/

Another Reason For School Librarians

I knew it would happen sooner than later...My child would be taught that "non-fiction is a genre." Argh. Cough Cough. Grunt. 

Non-fiction isn't a genre; it's a section in the library. In Spanish it makes more sense "no ficción." Simply put, books that are non-fiction are books that are just that, not fiction.

 Fiction is one of many categories found in the library. 

Fiction: Fictitious literature; comprehensively, all works of imagination; specifically, novels and romances. The office of fiction as a vehicle of instruction and moral elevation has been recognized by most if not all great educators.

- Dict. of Education. (Websters, 1913)

Books that are fiction are stories with made up characters, setting, plot, and created or written by one or two authors. That's fiction. Of course there are many fiction books based on an event or an actual person such as Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko. 

In the Dewey system the books included in the non-fiction categories include more than books with information about people, animals, sports, arts, science, history  etc. Books that are "not fiction" also include joke books, myths and legends, books about horror and monsters, graphic novels, cartoon books, poetry books, and more. In many libraries, a book with a collection of stories written by a particular author, or book with a collection of fictional stories with a particular theme written by different authors are located in the non-fiction section.

So...do not teach kids that non-fiction is a genre. There's no such thing. If I only had a dollar for every child who I've heard say, "non-fiction is true." When students find "Red Riding Hood" in the non-fiction section they get confused because the wolf is not "real." How often have library staff get stuck in the adult discussion about fairy tales, folk-tales, and the tranmission of cultural norms, beliefs, and morals, through oral tradition trying to explain why La Llorona is in the non-fiction section. 

Teaching non-fiction as a genre confuses kids who are trying to figure out where things belong, how things can be categorized, and what makes something "true" or "false." Teach them about the different types of fiction, then help them to learn about all of the other types of exciting categories of books that are organized and easily located in print and online libraries.

Teach them where to find different topics and that information can be sorted into many different categories. Dewey Decimal is just one way books are sorted or categorized so we can find what we want quickly. 

Can you tell this is my pet peeve? 

Current Events

Read: Every Class Should Start with Current Events


What I would add to the great ideas in the article:
Yes the students can make connections with current events each day. The teacher can design questions to start the discussion but students need to do the "thinking work" by reviewing the lesson/learning experience/unit's exploration/questions for the day and then researching and/or making connections to their own knowledge and understandings.

For homework they can post empirical evidence, primary resources, quotes or stats from experts, URL's, articles or comments on a collaborative Google.doc or an online bulletin board thread.

Teachers can use the homework responses to open the class and debate/discuss/come to consensus on which resources/creators/authors are most authoritative, which connections are most relevant to the unit, questions, content, or students' lives.

You can also analyze which connections challenge current thinking, or how connections can lead further small group or independent inquiries. Challenge students to show a perspective that is counter to the unit or their personal knowledge or beliefs.

Use their comments as a formative assessment of their information and media literacy, transfer, and critical thinking skills. 

If you include your Librarian/Teacher Librarian in your plan ahead of time, he/she can create a pathfinder with links to high-quality international news sources, and can facilitate/co-teach and/or model information and media literacy skills to locate, evaluate, gather, organize/curate, analyze/question, produce/create, and share high quality information.

Each week students can volunteer, rotate, or be assigned to capture/curate and annotate the most relevant resources, evidence, discussion summaries and contribute to a an online legacy product to pass on to next year's students.

More ideas:
Facing History


50 Ways to Teach With Current Events - New York Times